September 30

Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen died on the 30th in 1978. Together with his partner Charlie McCarthy, Bergen achieved great success as an entertainer. While he briefly attended Northwestern University, he never graduated. When he finally became successful, Northwestern at last gave Bergen the honorary degree of Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comeback. Which only goes to prove that sometimes being a wise ass pays off. In 1955, Edgar was the Grand Marshal of the Annual Great Oregon Steam-Up in Brooks, Oregon. A yearly show which features steam traction engines

September 29

How a person chooses to celebrate his or her birthday is often a matter of very personal choice. Pompey the Great chose to celebrate his 45th birthday, on the 29th in 61 b.c.e., by ending the Mithridatic Wars with a stunning victory over the nation-state of Pontus. Apparently, there were more than a few people who did not think that Pompey was all that great because on his 58th birthday in 48 b.c.e., he was assassinated when he landed in Egypt

Pompey had the same problem with women that England’s Henry VIII did – there were a lot of them. In sequential order, they were Antistia, Aemilia Scaura, Mucia Tertia, Julia (I have no idea where Julia came from, but it seems to me that her name is just a tad out of place), and Cornelia Metella.

September 28

Georges Clemenceau, born on the 28th in 1841, was a political leader who helped steer France through the troubled waters of World War 1. On February 20, 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference, an anarchist shot Clemenceau. Fortunately, Clemenceau was not seriously injured. He recovered from the assassination attempt and was able to joke about it. On one occasion, he was quoted as saying, “We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who misses his target 6 out of 7 times at point-blank range. Of course, this fellow must be punished for the careless use of a dangerous weapon and for poor marksmanship. I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery.”

September 27

Lancaster, Pennsylvania began life as a planned city carved out of the Penn Family’s holdings in, oddly enough, Pennsylvania. James Hamilton laid out the plan for the new city in 1734. The town was chartered as a borough in 1742 and incorporated as a town in 1818. For an incredibly brief period, Lancaster was the capitol of the newly emerging United States of America. The revolutionaries had been forced to leave Philadelphia when it was over run by British troops. They then set up shop in Lancaster on the 27th in 1777. Not wanting to over stay their welcome, the next day when the American troops left Lancaster, they took their capitol with them. So there!

Lancaster is the birthplace of the first battery powered wrist watch, the Hamilton Electric 500, made by the Hamilton Watch Company. Will the joy never cease? The Rodda Candy Company first made peeps, that delightful sugar enhanced treat, which have a shelf life slightly longer than uranium 235, in Lancaster.

September 26

Born on the 26th in 1867, Winsor McCay became a talented and quite successful cartoonist and animator. He influenced many other artists, from Moebius to Maurice Sendak. One of his more famous comic strips, ‘Little Nemo in Slumberland,’ was made into an animated movie. His breakthrough comic however was Tales of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle. The newspaper Cincinnati Enquirer published forty-three installments of the comic strip from January to November of 1903. McCay brought a sense of humor to his work and, while Little Nemo is amazing, I think Little Sammy Sneeze, seen here, is my favorite.

September 25

Many people are in the habit of beginning their day with a cup of coffee while reading a newspaper. There was a time when that simply was not possible. On the 25th in 1690, Benjamin Harris produced the first multi-page newspaper in the American colonies. It was called Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick and promised to be published monthly, or, “if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener." This was a very ambitious undertaking for Mr. Harris. Unfortunately, the colonial governors were having none of it and Harris’s paper would never again see the light of day.

September 24

The first attempts to master air travel were made using balloons, gas filled or hot air balloons, beginning in the 18th century. The first mechanically powered balloons did not make their appearance until the middle of the nineteenth century. On the 24th in 1852, Henri Giffard, who had equipped a hydrogen-filled balloon with a 400-pound steam engine that produced three hp and made the first controlled flight in a balloon. This first flight covered a distance of 27 km.